Godzilla

The last time I saw the great monster Godzilla on a theatre screen was in in the Japanese film Godzilla 2000, and, even though there was still Japanese Godzilla movies made after that, the giant Kaiju went quiet in North America, returning to the deep for many years.  And perhaps it was a good move as the excitement for the giant lord of the deep was starting to wain and began to quiet down.  Some things, however, can only remain dormant for so long.

In the latest installment of the franchise, Godzilla (2014) brings its own new interpretation to the history of the mammoth beast, and spends the first half hour or so of the movie introducing the major players and allowing the mystery to slowly be unravelled.  Bryan Cranston plays an engineer turned conspiracy theorist who is convinced that the Japanese government has something they are trying to hide at the site of a nuclear reactor that he worked at before it melted down.  He finds his antics getting him into trouble with the Japanese police, and his son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) heads from his nice life in the states after returning from military duty to bail his father out before finding himself wrapped up in the mess as well.

There, that is the plot.  Most of the times in a monster movie the plot is just a spinning wheel that transports us from our pleasant introductions to furious creatures pounding the monster-snot out of each other.  The trailers for the film had added an element of intrigue around the concept of a government cover-up, and I became kind of sad through the first portion of the film as the execution of the plot felt lifeless.  I also began to learn that thinking too much about the plot really was a waste of time, because it did not bring any excitement and was pretty ripe with possible holes.

Before the story could be too much of an issue for me, I was pulled off into a world of the giant monsters, which had now arrived on the scene, and began feeling just like a little boy again.  Director Gareth Edwards and screenplay writer Max Borenstein know well just how to build to a big event.  We got a lot of teasers from the Godzilla and his Rodan-like opponent, but full payoff was held back until the very end.  At a time in cinema where summer blockbusters are all about flexing 30 minute long battle sequences that end up numbing the audience, the build and anticipation showed that less can be more, and it can top the excitement of a Michael Bay movie about fighting robots.

One of my favourite moments in the movie was the first real appearance of Godzilla, a sequence that took place over perhaps ten minutes.  The monster’s arrival was not the purpose of the scene, but rather another element as there was a lot happening, which allowed Edwards to drag it out and get people like me ultimately geeked out and pumped for what was about to happen.  Much like the world of professional wrestling, the entrance sets the tone, and what a wonderful tone it set.

The special effects crew on this film was enormous, and it showed in the quality of the visuals.  Seeing it in 3D actually assisted giving scale and proportion at times, creating the sense that human characters were puny and insignificant.  Edwards also chose moments of a first person perspective in scenes that added to the emotional element that Ford was going through as he was trying to help save humanity.  And, on another technical note, it was not an incredibly loud movie, especially not compared to the aforementioned Michael Bay.  Edwards showed great abilities in using silence during portions of the movie, which then would elevate the effect of Godzilla roaring.  Technically, this film was a treat.

And that is why I chose to give up on worrying about the plot.  The people in charge of the film knew exactly how to create very epic and memorable moments, and pulled them off with expertise that forced a child-like grin to be tattooed on my face for much of the movie.  The biggest accomplishment of them all was the fact that the audience gains an appreciation for Godzilla and roots for him to not just kick ass, but to win and live to fight another day.  This movie proves that summer epics do not have to be close to three hours long, they do not need to be loud, and they do not need to rely on lengthy fight sequences to be entertaining.

Rating – 3 out of 4 stars

The Breakdown of Neighbors

It's Monday, and today my friend and fellow reviewer Chris and I have our podcast up and posted.  We talk about our thoughts of the new Seth Rogan movie Neighbors (and Chris decides to drop the gloves over the most miniscule of differences of opinions) as well as 2014 Oscar nominated documentary Blackfish.  On top of that, we give our thoughts on the martial arts spectacle that is Ip Man (a tale of the man who would become the teacher of Bruce Lee) and the hard hitting look at romance in Blue Valentine with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.

After all of the chit chat on the movies, we then get into the discussion on the recent news of Netflix being picked up by three cable providers in the United States.  While it may not sound like huge news, it is a groundbreaking moment in the evolution of entertainment, and we talk all about it.

You can find the podcast here.  I hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to give your comments, feedback, or whatever you may have to say.  And, if you do enjoy it, please feel free to share it with others.

Have a great Monday... I will not.  I will be watching Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star for next week's podcast.  If you do not know why I am dreading this, you can read my review of it that I posted months ago.  Sadly, I do not remember that train wreck well enough to go off memory, thus the second viewing.  A sad day for Scott.

Flash Gordon

After the big sci-fi adventure boom that was brought about thanks to Star Wars, there seemed to be a clamouring to hop onto the popularity and cash in with similar type films.  The year was 1980, and entering the epic space scene was Flash Gordon, a movie based off of the 1930s comic strip.  On a visceral level, I suppose as well as on an acting and script level, the film, at first glance, feels a notch or two above the Italian movie Starcrash.  If you simply substitute Christopher Plummer for Max von Sydow and David Hasselhoff for Timothy Dalton you could possibly make a case for the two movies being of similar schlocky form.

There is a main difference, however, between Flash Gordon and Starcrash as well as the many other space movies of the time.  Instead of taking a purely serious approach (and failing as Starcrash did), director Mike Hodges and scriptwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. went the route of creating a film that was full of an intentional campiness.  There may be some folks out there who could believe that I am wrong in viewing it that way and that the film was truly a poorly made film, but one only needs to know that Semple is the same man who penned the infamous 1966 Batman: The Movie starring Adam West (AKA the best Batman ever).  Batman: The Movie is a film that perfected the art of intentional camp, allowing the movie to be close enough to walk the line that would confuse people in understanding  its true intentions of what Adam West likes to call ‘the theatre of the absurd.’  The same heights of the art form are not found in Flash Gordon, but it is still deceptive enough to leave people believing it was taking itself seriously.

The movie finds Earth to be in trouble, thanks to the meddling nature of The Emperor Ming (von Sydow), which means that a flight home for Flash Gordon (Sam J. Jones) turns into a nightmare of turbulence and poor special effects as Earth is plagued by natural (and unnatural) disasters.  After Flash flirts with the only other passenger on the plane, Dale (Melody Anderson), he safely lands the plane into the side of a greenhouse/secret rocket launch facility of Dr. Hans Zarkov (Oscar nominated Topol).  Flash, who is in need of making a phone, is tricked into entering a rocket ship with an intricate flight system that needs someone to step on a red pedal, shoots off into space and enters into a tie-dyed black hole.

Once in space, Flash shows the powers he has as being quarter back for the New York Jets and attempts to save earth by uniting the divided peoples under the rule of the dread Emperor Ming.  He comes face to face with over the top costumes, odd gimmicks, and the ever present looming danger of poor acting and dialogue.  This is where the brilliance of Hodges and Semple come into play, as they do just enough to make it laughable, but never bring it fully into the realm of complete catastrophe.

The sound track to the film is enhanced by Queen, who made a special anthem for the blond-haired hero.  The song is not great, and it is not even that good.  What it is, though, is fitting to the feel of camp-style heroics that the movie is aiming to capture.  The repetitive and over-the-top nature of the song burrows deep into your head like those torturous creatures that Khan used in Wrath of Khan, a key means for which to carry out his wrath.

I am kind of saddened that I never saw this film in my childhood.  I feel like perhaps I missed out on the legend that it could have been for an eight year old boy (although I only would have been two when it was in theatres).  Still, many years later I find much fascination and youthful energy in the movie that entertained me from start to finish.  Oh, and, as mentioned, Timothy Dalton is in it, too!

Rating – 3 out of 4 stars

As a side note, I remember hearing a tale of someone whose mother intended to rent Flash Gordon for her son’s birthday party.  Popping the VHS into the player and hitting play, she left the boys to have their fun while they watched good versus evil and ate potato chips.  What she would realize about ten minutes later, when she heard noises coming from the television that did not sound like the movie she had envision as well as absolutely no sounds coming from the young boys.  After investigating, she quickly discovered that she had accidently rented Flesh Gordon, which carries a rather different approach to telling the story.  Parents, always be sure to properly read the titles of movies.

Neighbors

Some people flock to raunchy R-rated comedies in theatres, while I am the type of person who would rather just stand on the side of the road and wait for them to pass.  I don’t think I am a prude (I joke a lot about farts and bums) and am tolerable to a lot of the edgy elements that cinema can hold.  The way I see it, if it tells a story and stays true to what it is then I will let it be.  That does not really mean I will personally enjoy it.

There are a few in this genre that end up winning my heart over.  I absolutely loved the cleverly written and directed 21 Jump Street, and was very surprised when I had a great time watching The Hangover and The Hangover 3 (I hope you notice that I did not reference the second Hangover movie).  So, for the sake of being open minded (and because of the fact that I needed to see it for review on an upcoming podcast) I went to the theatre to take in the latest R-rated comedy, Neighbors.

The film is about a young married couple with a baby who put all of their money into buying a house.  Seth Rogan plays Mac, and his wife Kelly is played by Rose Byrne.  When I think of Seth Rogan, I think of a lot of raunchy comedies that I never really laughed at (excluding This is the End), and when I think of Rose Byrne I cannot get the image of her continually gaping blank stare that she had in Insidious.  Life for this happy couple, who still want to be youthful and hold onto their days of partying, takes a turn when a fraternity purchases the house next door.  They then find themselves worried about the noise, but they also don’t want to come off as uncool old people to the young college partiers.  There.  That is the basis of the plot.

I suppose, if I am talking about the plot, I should mention that the president of the fraternity, played by Zac Efron, ends up getting more than a little peeved at the attempts of his neighbours to keep the noise to a minimum, and a back and forth battle begins between the two households, each escalating events further and further.

There were indeed a number of times where I was laughing.  The movie started out with the comedy being dialogue based, and the comedic timing and delivery of Rogan was put on display quickly.  Rose Byrne, whom I had never pictured as being in a comedy, was the darling of the movie for me.  She had a great energy and was able to keep up pace with the well-seasoned and developed skills of Rogan.  She really opened my eyes to her potential, and I am so desperately hoping to see her name attached to comedies in the future.

Zac Efron also opened my eyes to his abilities and the possible future that may be in front of him.  I am sure that many a girl who had crushes on the young heart throb wanted to see the movie because of promotional material promising scenes of his cut body being on display (in a similar way that The Other Woman made sure to promote Kate Upton in a bikini).  Me, I do not have a crush on the young man, but I have now put him on my radar of actors to follow now.  His physically enhanced body will open some doors for him, and hopefully he does not end up taking regrettable roles which spiral him around in the void of mid-2000s Matthew McConaughey type films.  There were moments of charm, nuance, and charisma that show he may be able to be groomed into modern era McConaughey roles.  Alright, alright, alright, back to talking about the film.

However, of course there had to be a ‘however,’ the established comedic tone of verbal and situational jokes abruptly switched throughout the film, relying at times on very slap-stick and over the top, unrealistic moments.  Both slap-stick and unrealistic comedy is fine, but it works if it serves the unified feel of a film, and in Neighbors it did not.  Sometimes laughing, sometimes face palming, I sensed that this film was an intoxicated driver that could not stay within the lines and would get disastrously close to ending up in the ditch.

I believe that a large portion of the problem comes from the script, which felt disheveled and erratic.  The writers, Brendan O’Brien and Andrew J Cohen, were both first timers to writing a feature film, and I am not willing to write them off as poor script writers, but rather just having an unfortunate start.  They did try and create back story and motivation for the characters, as well as humanize both sides of this conflict, and they get points for that.  Sadly, because of the ever shifting landscape of the style of comedy and feel, you quickly forget any understanding of the principals involved.  I bet there are a lot of people who may not see the issues the same as myself, but after the first twenty minutes of the film I was lost in a world of shifting realities and jarring tonal transitions.

There were a number of laughs, which meant it was not a complete waste of time.  With that being said, I cannot downplay the fact that I was incredibly bored for the final half hour, laughing only from time to time, and generally not caring about any outcome other than merely a quick one.  If you are a bigger fan of the R-rated comedy than I am, you may enjoy a lot of the humour that I did not and you may think that I am just too ‘conservative’ to enjoy the film.  That would not be a true assumption.  If a movie, of any genre, is done in a coherent way that that shows talent towards its purpose, I will appreciate it fully.  This film just simply was not that.

Rating – 2.5 out of 4 stars

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

First off, on a personal note, today I am celebrating the five year anniversary of my marriage to my wife Rachel.  In fact, we are back in the small town where we wed, right around the corner from the very hall where we exchanged our vows.  Aw, so cute.   So, while my wife is off doing… I don’t know, whatever, I will spend a bit of time to talk about the newest super hero flick in theatres, The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Re-boots and re-imaginings are a very popular occurrence in Hollywood, and have been for some time now.  It is hard to not believe that the majority of the time it has little to do with making money and repackaging something that is deemed easily sellable, but sometimes it also allows directors and script writers to have their chance to tell the story how they had it envisioned in their heads.  So, along came a Spider-Man  two years ago and it felt to be full of legitimate purpose for opening that door and taking the hero in a direction that does not lead to an emo look and dance sequences.  Andrew Garfield shone brightly in the role, and Emma Stone created chemistry with him that worked to elevate the personal side of the story.

Having my doubts against the new and invigorated franchise wiped away, I had a great deal of excitement for this latest installment, especially with the inclusion of the wonderful acting wiles of Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan.  My anticipation even caused me to purchase the bank-breakingly priced popcorn at the theatre so that I could fully enjoy this blockbuster that is the official kick off to the 2014 summer blockbuster season with my friend, and fellow reviewer, Chris (you will be able to check out both of our thoughts on this movie on our podcast, The Breakdown, on Monday at Chris’ blog found here… shameless plug intended).

With much regret, I must say that the film did not start out on the best note, with Spidy battling villains who look like they should have been off in the post-apocalyptic outback of Australia battling Mad Max.  The most outrageous of these baddies was a character played by the wonderful actor, Paul Giamatti.  I never thought I would not enjoy him in a role, but it looks like anything can happen in movies.  His character and the whole opening sequence reminded me of the Joel Schumacher era of Batman, an aura that would appear sporadically throughout the film.

One of the small touches that I really thought was neat in The Amazing Spider-Man was the fact that he swung off of his webbing in a way that showed that it was attached to something, and not the ridiculous way the old cartoons had it where he would go down the middle of the street leaving a six year old Scott wondering over what the heck he was even able to attach his webs to.  In the first film, there was a spot where he went right down the street, creating that old nostalgia, but they set it up by having people spin crane arms over the street to make it possible.  It’s a little thing, but I appreciated it.  That was thrown out the window in the new film, which didn’t even desire to consider such aspects and even had the web-slinger suspending baddies from webs in the middle of streets that had no overhead points of contact.  Once again, a little thing, but it saddened me because that was not the route that the franchise was heading in the first movie, attempting to be less over the top and making Spider-Man function in a world of physics and physical structures.

Okay, small disappointments aside (for the moment), the movie was a bit of a mess.  It was able to ground itself in some solid on screen relationships, but it lost out on building off of that in so many ways.  The character of Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) was another reminder for me of the Schumacher style of creating villains, a poorly written and forced character that becomes a villain with shoe-horned motivations.  In a film that had a distractingly over-reliance on CGI, it was rather funny that one of the only physical effects they had was childish and amateur.  Max Dillon had a gap in his teeth (when he becomes Electro, who for some reason tailors a cool suit for himself, complete with logo, he loses the gap) which was an obvious mark of black on one of his front teeth that was easily visible.  It did not even go from root to tip of the tooth, and you could see the white of his tooth at the gum line.  Another small detail, but it was just comical that with their budget and efforts they were so shoddy on a physical prop.

The build of Electro was very disjointed, a chaotic stew of poorly weaving his personal motivations together and an assault of music that gave it a very childish tone.  Once he took to battling Spider-Man, I found myself quickly bored for multiple reasons.  Firstly, the development of Electro was extremely flawed and I just did not really care.  There was so much potential to his abilities and the performance that Foxx could give, and seeing it wasted was unfortunate.  Secondly, the fight scenes (especially their second encounter) where shot in a way that included the camera swooping continuously through the battle and switching to slow motion and stop –time that I no longer believed I was watching a movie, but rather the cut scene from a video game.  It completely lacked the feel of having actors in it, but just digital images of them, and I don’t have any care if pixels survive or not.  I am all for using CGI to enhance, but the battles lacked the human element altogether.

There really are so many different aspects of this film that I could express my dismay over, but I will rather turn now to what the film did right.  When it hit the mark, it was spot on.  The relationship between Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) was full of inspiring emotion, and the two leads played off each other with conviction.  On top of that, the interactions between Parker and Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) were on another planet.  Both are tremendous talents with bright futures, and I absolutely loved seeing them together, giving the sense of sincere friendship.

Dane DeHaan, in fact did a performance in this film that will hopefully open the eyes of the mainstream audiences to what he is capable of doing.  He allowed the slow descent into madness and self-preservation of Harry Osborn feel like a serious threat to Spider-Man.  That is, until they had their computer game tussle and I was watching what computer animators were able to do instead of two skilled actors engaged in a personal and intimate battle.  It really comes down to director Marc Webb, and his decision on how to film the fight sequences.  He truly could have done it in a way that had the CGI, but also using the two actors to be incorporated in a struggle between two long-time friends.  Instead, he opted for long, single shots of whirling and swooping that took the personal element from the story.

My personal thoughts?  It had times of entertainment, but it was also a bore for me.  You may find it different.  You may like a diet of digital images more than me.  I do like them at times.  I won’t mind it when Godzilla is all digital, because that is the better of two roads that can be taken (the other option being a man in a rubber suit stepping on models of buildings), but in a film that is based on personal motivations of real characters it was an opportunity missed.  I shall now seek out my wife, spend some time with her, and remember the first Amazing Spider-Man film, a movie which blended cinematic techniques well to tell a human story of change, growth, and teen angst.

Rating – 1.5 out of 4 stars